As long as I was breathing with the contractions and not pushing against them, I felt better. That idea is fundamental-to feel pain and not to resist; to go towards it. It is an incredibly spiritual practice.

Parents should not smoke in order to discourage their kids from smoking. A child is more likely to smoke when they have been raised in the environment of a smoker.

Yoga is not a religion to me.

I sincerely feel that beauty largely comes from within.

People always think that if you eat anything as a model, it's amazing. I used to tease them and say, you know I'm going to throw up afterwards.

Yoga has reinforced and grounded my own spiritual beliefs.

A lot of people have questioned how yoga and their own spiritual beliefs can come together. Yoga actually pre-dates religion.

I started practicing Yoga at about 18. I had a friend who was doing it and was incredibly disciplined and meditated all the time.

Sacred spaces can be created in any environment.

I like the big questions.

What I did for a living for so many years separated who I was from what I did.

Modeling is a profession where your worth is tied up with looks.

I have lots of other mountains that I would like to climb. I have no dream of Everest, but there are some, like Mount Fuji, I'd like to do.

I would be very proud to have influenced anyone that I know or don't know to quit smoking.

You can usually tell when I'm happy by the fact that I've put on weight.

As long as I was breathing with the contractions and not pushing against them, I felt better. That idea is fundamental-to feel pain and not to resist; to go towards it. It is an incredibly spiritual practice.

I tried acupuncture, the patch, and hypnosis, but found that I needed to do it alone - when the time was right for me.

I'd rather go naked than wear fur.

When you are balanced and when you listen and attend to the needs of your body, mind, and spirit, your natural beauty comes out.

I was never directly pressured by peers, but by surrounding myself with others who were experimenting with smoking provided a certain false comfort.

I don't think that artists of any kind would or could sacrifice their artistic freedom by being more responsible with their influence on people, especially young people.

It is education that will arm us with the tools that will enable us to succeed and put a stop to the rising rates of preventable death.

It is possible to experience an awakening in this life through realising just how precious each moment, each mental process, and each breath truly is.

Most of us harbour a significant amount of subconscious fear about death, and act out of this fear in our daily lives.

Yoga gave me the ability to calm down.

Pranayama is the practice of breath control. The word prana refers not only to breath, but also to air and life itself.

Parents should be the most important examples for their children.

It is better to not even try it than to endure the ramifications of either quitting smoking or dying.

Yoga is about compassion and generosity towards others. It means being mindful of the world around us.

Any spirituality can be enhanced with the practice or study of yoga.

I never understand why people have children and then insist on living as though nothing has shifted.

So much of religion is exegesis. I would rather follow in the footprints of Christ than all of the dogma.

The seated lotus postures are an amazing way to go into meditation, or simply just to take a moment to ground oneself.

Nicotine is both a stimulant and a depressant, so that can make one feel quite imbalanced.

I have a beer belly.

Ayurveda is a sister philosophy to yoga. It is the science of life or longevity and it teaches about the power and the cycles of nature, as well as the elements.

I really wanted to share with people the day-to-day joys that yoga can bring into one's life-not just the physical aspects.

Yoga has brought me closer to myself. It's helped me realize the interconnectedness of the mind, body and spirit, in the Buddhist sense of the word.

A lot has changed since the 1980s, when the United States was a country with one of the greatest numbers of people infected with HIV.

Access to maternal healthcare is a human right.

After delivering my daughter in 2003, I endured and survived a hemorrhage, the leading childbirth-related complication that takes the lives of thousands of other mothers all over the world.

America's health care system is the most complicated and expensive in the world.

As a Global Maternal Health Advocate, I get to travel the world quite a bit, meeting individuals and visiting programs with tremendous potential and incredible vision to improve the quality of life for countless others.

As a child, the conversations that I liked to have with my friends - or with anyone, for that matter - were always about religion.

As a global community, we have to start thinking more seriously about whether there are limits to what our earth can bear and if we're willing to cope with the struggle for limited resources, which only seem to increase as our population does.

As a parent, I can get so frustrated. Any parent can!

Cholera is even more severe among populations who are immunologically naive.

Even though Haitian women are considered the 'poto mitan' - the 'central pillars' of the family and their communities - they are often the most underserved members of already poor communities.

Every Mother Counts is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother. We inform, engage, and mobilize audiences to take action and raise funds that support maternal health programs around the world.